Dos muros da prisão à prisão sem muros: sentidos produzidos sobre a experiência de cárcere e liberdade com homens negros na cidade de Salvador/Bahia

Abstract

This study was inspired by concerns about systemic processes that, as a Black man, I have personally experienced and which later resonated in my academic and professional journey. Its objective was to explore the meanings produced by incarceration and post-incarceration freedom for men who self-identify as Black in Salvador/Bahia/Brazil. The study is theoretically and methodologically grounded in the social psychology perspective of Discursive Practices and Meaning Production, enriched by contributions from various fields addressing racial relations and critical theories on mass incarceration. To ensure transparency in analyzing the discourses produced with participants, thematic categorical analysis was employed as the primary methodological approach. The research aims to access, analyze, and make visible the experiences of incarceration and subsequent release of these men, as well as the effects and repercussions of their social positioning on their lives. Individual interviews were conducted with Black men aged between 24 and 36, who had experienced imprisonment and were currently living in freedom, i.e., as ex-convicts. These interviews were carried out at the headquarters of the Central de Apoio e Acompanhamento às Penas e Medidas Alternativas (CEAPA) and the Escritório Social, both under the Secretariat of Penitentiary Administration and Resocialization (SEAP). The analysis was organized around three thematic categories: (a) experiences and survival strategies in prison, focusing on the lived realities within prison structures; (b) the repercussions on daily life after release, highlighting the meanings produced with participants as former inmates; and (c) connecting these two themes to the effects of racism on the trajectories of Black men released from prison, culminating in a proposal for an analytical synthesis. The study concludes that, for certain individuals, skin color and phenotypic traits are always visible markers that exacerbate the stigma of having been “through the prison system.” There is a transition from the "prison with walls" to the "prison without walls" in the lives of former inmates, which often perpetuates state neglect in the intersections of race, gender, and incarceration. Thus, even before the commission of an unlawful act, race and phenotypic traits act as mechanisms for a racist symbol prision process that persists and cannot be ignored in discussions on the mass incarceration of black men from a Social Psychology perspective.